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The Night the Squirrel Attacked

December 01, 2011

It’s kind of like
when the “Nights Went Out in Georgia” but a lot worse. After reading my blog buddy, Anne Riley’s blog, another commenter
said something that brought back a very traumatizing event. (Read that blog here.) For those of you who might laugh or poke fun
or joke at my expense…this is a serious public service announcement.

***DO NOT LET SQUIRRELS LIVE IN YOUR ATTIC!***

I know what you
are thinking, “Dana, how can you make those sweet innocent souls homeless when
your blog is titled as such?” Well I can
say, “You’ve never walked a mile in my squirrel attacked shoes or you’d evict
those beasts too.” (Evict read “poison and kill.” Again, mile in my shoes, mile in my shoes.)

Look at the
beast:

Its malice claws,
like deadly eagle talons. That hideous
tail, like an Amazon python, ready to choke its prey. Or how about those beady eyes, ready to suck
the living soul right out of you!

Evil I say. Evil. Hear my story and you will agree.

When I was in
high school, Dec. 3, 1989, my senior year (note that I have the date BURNED in
my skull…FOREVER) I was attacked by a squirrel one night. Twice. Those
cute little baby squirrels in the attic ATTACKED ME! The little critter chewed
a hole in my closet sheetrock and attacked me in my very bedroom.

I was sleeping
and heard their ratty claws scraping at the walls. Rats with tails. I thought they were scraping from the inside,
but when I called out to fear them into scattering, the beast was laying on my arm tucked behind my head. I threw the foul
creature with my elbow across the room.
It thudded against the wall and scampered into my closet. I shrieked a cry so loud, my parents came
downstairs to aide me. I exclaimed the
murderous attempt and begged for safekeeping in their bed. My parents refused to let their 16yo daughter
sleep in the bed with them because of “bad dreams,” so I slept in the guest
room just outside their room upstairs.

It took an hour
maybe two before my tense body could succumb to sleep again. That’s when I heard the faint skittering of
feet in the closet behind me. I writ it
off to my vivid imagination. Then a
distinct depression sunk the covering on my bed. The quick scampering of tiny feet across the
covers and SCREACH! the beast landed on
my legs. My bloody murder screaming (which
my mother swore to this day she actually thought someone was killing me) called
my parents to me. They saw the incubus
SCAMPERING ACROSS THE GRASSCLOTH WALLS! Mother screamed and slammed the bedroom
door, isolating me, and my gallant step father, in the room with the
creature. One broomstick later, the tiny
invader had met its end and we were free from the Squirrel Queen’s Tyranny. (And a crapload of rat poison in the
attic.)

Thus I must add, that was the
one and only night I ever slept with my parents.

From that night,
until the 20th of April, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety, I slept with
ALL my lights on, the TV on and one towel stuffed under my bedroom door, another
towel under my closet door. I kid you
not. So when you read my blogs and you
think, “That girl ain’t right.” Now you
will know why I'm a little "squirrelly."